YOUNG BLACK MEN IN PRISON

A few years back I wrote an essay suggesting that young black men in prison are there because want to be. In the essay I suggested that the hard work of learning an employable skill was more than they wanted to undertake, so they chose the risky and quick way to making money – knowing, or at lease expecting, they would end up behind bars. I went on to suggest that prison takes these YBM out of the hard-work of having to earn a legal living while at the same time providing a handy excuse why they can't ever be productive members in a community. My speculation was and is born out of the notion that we, all of us, make choices; we choose the course our lives take. Yes, the social, political, and economic processes in America are constructed to limit those choices – to obstruct the progress of black people; but we can overcome those obstacles. Just one suggestion – what do you suppose would happen if a group of young black men went to a learning institution demanding to be enrolled in a specific course of skill development; a course that would lead to a good job at its completion? This country is willing to build more prisons it can just as easily build more classrooms, hire more teachers. Sleep on it